Carnival of Space #211

Another week ends another Carnival of Space begins! A lot of great writers bringing great articles to the table, so let’s get started. (My unrelated fun photo offering: X-15 pilots enjoy a lighter moment during the program – I guess you can only clown around so much when dealing with this level of technology. Mid-late 1960s.)

Urban Astronomer tells us that the orbiting X-Ray observatory, Chandra, has recently collected detailed images of gas falling into a black hole. This confirms current models of what exactly causes the powerful radiation observed coming from black holes.

And speaking of things way out in space, Weird Warp tells is that there is a problem with our current way of looking for alien civilizations. SETI looks for signals that are sent by the electromagnetic spectrum and their are a lot of frequencies to search. If you pair this with the size of the universe you can see how SETI is really looking for a needle in a haystack. But it’s still a good idea; one needle in one haystack is all that is needed.

Chandra Blog brings a thinker into the mix this week as well. Back by popular demand is the video blog series Meet An Astronomer, this week featuring Harvard associate professor in the astronomy department Julia Lee.

Discovery News looks at a monster of a quasar – a reminder that we don’t know the early universe as well as we think we do.

And speaking of the early universe, The Next Big Future relays the possibility that it could have had intense magnetic fields that could have been a hyperbolic metmaterial in the vacuum if a recent arxiv paper is correct. This could be detected by analyzing the cosmic background radiation.

Finally, not quite manned spaceflight but space technology built by men, The Next Big Future take a look at the recent work to develop computer chips that can propel spacecraft using the lorentz force. Such chips could eventually be launched near to 1% of the speed of light from the magnetic field of Jupiter.

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[…] #211 Posted on August 19, 2011 by Paul Scott Anderson Carnival of Space #211 is now posted at Vintage Space.Share EmailPrint This entry was posted in Carnival of Space by Paul Scott Anderson. Bookmark the […]

[…] Click here to read Carnival of Space #211 And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign up to be a host. Send an email to the above address. […]

[…] Click here to read Carnival of Space #211 And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign up to be a host. Send an email to the above address. […]